ENG 5933 Fall 2019 Yancey

ENG 5933 will explore two related questions. First, what difference does technology, particularly digital technology, make in the ways that we read and compose, and the ways that knowledge is made, sanctioned, and shared? Second, what do changes related to digital technology mean for curricula and pedagogy? To answer these questions, we will consider briefly the historical relationship between literacies and technologies before focusing on changes that are occurring now: What are they? What do we make of them? How are societies and public institutions reacting? What new institutions and practices are emerging? As scholars and teachers, how do we respond to and/or participate in these changes? For a framework, we will draw on the rhetorical canons—invention, delivery, arrangement, style, and memory—to help us consider how literacy is being challenged and transformed by digital technologies and Web 2.0 social networking. Readings will include all or parts of Ong's Orality and Literacy; Brown's The Social Life of Information; Bolter and Grusin's Remediation; Lanham's The Electronic Word; Hawisher and Selfe's Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies; Johnson's Interface Culture; Yancey and McElroy's Assembling Composition; Standage's Writing on the Wall; Jenkins' Spreadable Media; and several articles, book chapters, YouTube videos, and webtexts.

Course requirements include (1) considerable reading and writing (in print and online); (2) several smaller projects (e.g., creating a map of circulation; writing for the web); and (3) a larger culminating project: options include individual work (a print bibliographic essay; a creation of a weblog or set of wiki entries on the one or more issues; a syllabus keyed to these issues) and collaborative work (a creation of a website focusing on issues we address in the course; a set of themed interviews with scholars addressing these issues made available in multiple formats).